


New Faces, New Chases

by WorryinglyInnocent



Series: SBU - Chasing Our Tales [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - College/University, Chase'verse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 13:51:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the start of a new academic year at Storybrooke, and the university is in high spirits as the professors and PhD students return and some new recruits arrive... A snapshot of life in the SBU humanities faculty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Faces, New Chases

**Author's Note:**

> In honour of it being Children in Need tomorrow night and nearly the first anniversary of the first Chase'verse fic, I present another snippet from the universe. 
> 
> Professor Abelard is a complete OC, not based on any fairy tale character, and included here as homage to my brother.

**New Faces, New Chases**

“I still can’t believe you randomly went to Rome on a whim to tell Gold you love him,” Ruby said. Belle just laughed. The two women were in their office, an office that was soon to belong to Belle and an unknown new office-mate. Ruby had just finished her PhD and published her thesis, and the university (or rather, Cara Mallory), had offered her a place as a junior lecturer on the newly-created gender studies course that was being trialled from the next academic year. Since she was now a full PhD, Ruby was getting her own office, and she and Belle were in the process of moving all of Ruby’s things out of their shared office and into her new one, four doors down the corridor.

“Seriously though,” she continued, packing her china wolf collection into a box file for ease of transportation. “You should have got a picture of him in archaeologist mode. I’d pay good money to see Dr Gold with a beard.”

“Dr Gold with a beard?” Belle looked up from sorting through Ruby’s papers to find Mary Margaret peering around the doorframe. “Now that’s a scary thought.” She paused. “I was just coming to see if my new next-door neighbour needed any help moving. How are you getting on?”

“All right,” Ruby replied. “It’s going to be weird, having an office to myself again after a year of sharing.” She stood up and threw her arms around Belle. “I don’t want to go! I’ll get lonely!”

“Ruby, I get the feeling you’re going to end up spending more time in this office than your own as it is,” Mary Margaret said, picking up the box file full of wolves.

“Careful!” Ruby exclaimed, rushing over. “You almost chipped Quinn’s ear!”

“Quinn?”

“Well, they all have names,” Ruby said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “This one’s Quinn, this is Anita, this is Morgan, this is Lorenzo, this is Aloysius…”

“Ok, I get the picture.” Mary Margaret adjusted Quinn’s position in the box and bore the wolves out of the room. Ruby began pulling books out of her bookshelves and was halfway through the office door with a precariously balanced armful when she bumped into David Nolan.

“Oops,” she said, juggling books. “Hello. What are you doing over on this side of the building then? Did you get lonely in the history department on your own?”

“Erm, no.” David looked slightly sheepish. “Truth be told, I’m trying to keep a low profile whilst Gold’s moving back into his office.”

Belle’s brow furrowed.

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, you know when it snowed in January?”

“Belle wasn’t here in January,” Ruby pointed out. “She was on secondment in the British Library. But I remember the snow, yes. Go on…”

“Well, Professor Abelard and I may have broken into Gold’s office and stolen his kettle and heater to keep ourselves warm. And we may have forgotten to return them. We were cold!” David said, throwing his hands up in defence. “There were icicles hanging from the ceiling in our offices, I swear! To make matters even worse, I may have blown the fuse in the kettle and taken it home to fix, and it may have been sitting in my study at home for six months waiting to be fixed. Anyway, I didn’t think anything of it until I came in this morning to find Gold’s door propped open with a box and the man himself lying under his desk wiring his computer back in. Now our chance of returning said heater and kettle without him noticing anything has been amiss in his absence has unfortunately passed.”

“You never know,” Ruby said with a grin. “Go home and get the kettle, then get Belle to distract Gold for ten minutes, you can return his kettle and heater and he won’t be any the wiser.”

“If it was anyone other than Gold, I’d take you up on the offer,” David said with a sigh. “But as it is, the man misses nothing and he’ll have noticed he’s down one kettle as soon as he walked in the door. He’s got eyes like a hawk, I swear.”

“Only if he’s got his lenses in,” Ruby said archly. “Besides, hasn’t he taken a new PhD student this year? He’s probably too busy thinking up ways to terrorise him or her to pay you any mind. Ow!” she exclaimed as Belle threw a balled up piece of paper at her before turning to David. “Since I’ve finished my doctorate and Belle hasn’t yet, does that mean I can run her in for PhD abuse?”

David just raised an eyebrow and stepped aside out of the door to let Ruby past with her armful of books, and Belle was left to continue the conversation.

“So, did you have a good summer?” she began. David grimaced involuntarily for a moment and then hid the expression with a smile.

“Yeah, yeah, it was good…” he said, with a touch too much brightness for Belle to believe him. “Yeah… Kathryn got a seat in the law department.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Belle asked, although from David’s mood, he didn’t seem to share her positivity concerning his wife’s newly-gained tenure in the social sciences faculty across the campus.

“Yes, it’s good.”

Belle decided not to press it, because she could see where David’s thoughts were headed, namely down the corridor after Ruby, or rather, after Ruby’s new next-door neighbour. However blind she may have been to her own attraction to Dr Gold at the beginning of the previous year, Belle was usually intuitive when it came to relationships. It was no secret that Mary Margaret had been pining for the firmly unavailable Dr Nolan for many a semester now, and it seemed that this affection was not at all unrequited.

Before Belle could politely change the subject and move away from the sticky topic of unobtainable objects of desire, another voice could be heard coming down the English corridor, a voice that was undeniably Scottish and whose owner was undeniably peeved.

“Dr Nolan, what have you done with my kettle?”

“Erm…”

David looked frantically around for an escape route. Sadly, the corridor had only one access point other than the alarmed fire escape, and that was in the direction from which Gold was coming. He looked like he was seriously considering folding himself into Belle’s open filing cabinet as the tap of the older man’s cane could be heard bearing down upon them with alarming rapidity.

“How can he get around so quickly?” David mouthed in disbelief as he came into Belle’s office fully, closed the door, and although he realised that the cabinet would not hold him, he nevertheless decided that it was an excellent hiding place and ducked down behind it.

Belle merely shook her head in despair. A year of working in the faculty had taught her that sometimes, despite the fact that  the lecturers had all studied PhD’s and held various innumerable other qualifications, they didn’t have two brain cells to rub together sometimes.

There was a firm knock on the door, and Gold’s voice permeated through the wood.

“Dr Nolan, I know you’re in there. I have already retaken my storage heater from Professor Abelard, who brought it in with him when he came to help me shout at the useless heap of junk that is my computer. In fact, I believe he is still shouting at it as we speak. The principles of deduction have lead me to believe that you are responsible for the theft of the other electronic appliance that normally resides in my office, and therefore I am coming to reclaim it. In short, where is my kettle?”

“Erm…” David began. “In my office?” he suggested feebly.

“Dr Nolan, do you really think I would have chased you up here to your hiding place in Miss French’s office if I had not already searched your own?”

“You broke into my office!” David exclaimed.

“Yes,” Gold replied patiently. “Just like you and Professor Abelard broke into my office in January to ‘borrow’ my kettle.”

“Ah.” David grimaced as his logic became rapidly unstuck. “Erm… I don’t have it. Not with me.”

Belle’s office door swung open and Gold was outlined in the frame, leaning calmly on his cane. He peered into the room and gave David a little wave. From his cramped hiding place that had proved utterly useless, David couldn’t do much more than wave back.

“So, may I ask where it is?” Gold inquired politely. “And why you felt the need to remove it from the establishment?”

“Erm…” David began as he scrambled up from behind the filing cabinet and brushed himself off, making for the door.

“You broke it, didn’t you.”

It was a statement, not a question, and it was said with just enough menace for it to sound like a threat rather than a simple sentence. Belle could see the cogs turning in David’s mind as he tried desperately to think of an excuse, and she saw the moment that the fight or flight response decided in favour of flight. He took off down the corridor at a run with a call of ‘I’ll get you a new one, I promise’ and Gold, unwilling to let his hindered mobility separate him from his quarry, set off after him as fast as he was able, calling various threats in an interesting mixture of English, Gaelic, Italian and Ancient Greek, the both of them almost knocking Ruby down as she came back to move her next lot of books. She sighed.

“You’d never think that they were two of the most brilliant academic minds in the country, would you?”

Belle smiled. It wasn’t the beginning of the term yet; the professors were allowed to run riot in the few days they had before their classes started in earnest.

“Erm, I’m looking for Dr Gold. The professor who was in his room wasn’t actually him; he told me to come here to look for him. He said something about grievances over a kettle.”

Belle and Ruby turned to see a young blonde woman standing at the entrance to the English corridor, looking amused, inquisitive and shellshocked all in equal measure. If Professor Abelard’s first speech to her had not made her think the entire Storybrooke humanities faculty mad, then what she had just witnessed most definitely would have done.

“He just took off chasing Dr Nolan for breaking his kettle,” Ruby said. “But Dr Nolan’s faster so Gold will probably give up and come back when they reach the end of the corridor and Dr Nolan exits the building via the balcony in Dr Blanchard’s room. Can we help you in the meantime?”

The blonde woman shook her head.

“I’m not sure. You see, my name’s Emma Swan, I’m his new PhD student…”

X

It wasn't often that the dean called a full faculty meeting, something for which Belle was incredibly grateful, but when she did, she made sure that everyone knew about it. The first faculty meeting of the year, held the day prior to the beginning of Fresher's Week, was absolutely impossible to avoid. The email that was sent round to all the faculty members had the words 'ATTENDANCE COMPULSORY' emblazoned across it, not only in red font, but also emboldened, underlined and italicised.

"All it needs is several arrows pointing to it," Ruby said drily as she checked her emails on her laptop in the lecture theatre where the meeting was being held. The dean, never one for making her colleagues' lives easier, had scheduled the meeting for nine sharp, and if there was one thing that Regina Mills was famed for other than her acidic literary criticism, it was her punctuality. To Ruby's mind, this was far too early a time for a meeting on a Friday morning, especially as breakfast was not provided. The junior lecturer was nursing a takeaway cup of coffee to her chest as she huddled in her seat next to Belle, who was looking around at her colleagues and trying to guess what they had been up to over the holidays. It was telling, really, that the departments within the faculty all tended to stick together. English on one side of the room, modern languages on the other, archaeology and film studies squashed in the middle, and history in the back row where they hoped everyone would forget about them and they could nod off in peace. Belle twisted in her seat to look at Gold, tucked away in the far corner talking to David and Professor Abelard. No prizes for guessing who had initiated that particular tradition.

Cara Mallory slipped into the seat on Ruby's other side and her former student acknowledged her with a grunt and a grumbled 'it's too early for meetings'.

"I agree entirely," Cara said. "Mornings would be so much better if they started later in the day. That's why all my lecture classes love me; I never make them start thinking before about two o'clock in the afternoon."

Belle, naturally a morning person, said nothing and just smiled at the two night owls before turning to the figure on her right. Jefferson, in his final year of a PhD that had been a very long time coming, had pulled his hat down over his eyes and appeared for all intents and purposes to be asleep. Belle envied him and the fact he had enough eccentricity to get away with stunts like that. She prodded him but he didn't react, so she knew that he was only pretending to be completely uninterested in his surroundings. Her fellow PhD student generally kept himself to himself, but it was no secret that he had the most vivid imagination Belle had ever come across. His field of study was fantasy literature, especially the works of Lewis Carroll, and Belle had been among a select privileged few whom he had allowed to see his own creative writing; a fantastical children's novel of epic scale over a decade in the making and still never quite done. She scanned the rest of the theatre for other new faces, picking out a few and wondering where their specialisms lay. She frowned slightly; she couldn't see Emma, Gold's new student, sitting among the other history staff, and if Belle knew Gold, which she did, then he would want to make sure that his protégée didn't fall foul of the dean during her first week.

The clock on the wall of the lecture theatre struck nine and Professor Mills strode in and walked up to the lectern.

"Welcome back, humanities faculty, and to those of you joining us for the first year, welcome to Storybrooke."

Belle let the words drift into each other. The majority of the dean's speech consisted of various administrative notices about the new library periodicals room and the building works going on around the campus, all of which Belle had received numerous letters and emails about.

"We are also celebrating the creation of a new subsection within our English department, the Centre for Gender Studies, chaired by Professor Cara Mallory, assisted by Dr Ruby Lucas."

Cara and Ruby waved from their seats, bravely ignoring the glare that the dean gave them. "The Gender Studies course is groundbreaking as the first of the courses that we offer that crosses faculties without students combining honours, and the humanities faculty will be working in close partnership with life sciences." Regina's tone left her opinion of the life sciences faculty in little doubt.

Ruby flashed Belle a grin; each hated the dean as much as the other but her presence and influence within the faculty meant that it was very hard to get one over on her, and they rejoiced when they were able to rile her without fear of repercussion.

Regina didn't notice Ruby's triumphant expression and continued.

"We welcome back Doctors Gold and Jones from their research leave..."

"...and congratulate them on not killing each other whilst they were in Rome, particularly on the many occasions Jones ended up knocking on Gold's hotel room door drunk at two in the morning," Jefferson muttered from under his hat, and Belle had to bite her sleeve to stop her from laughing.

Presently the lecture theatre door opened, and the dean fell silent as a figure slipped into the room. It was Emma.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, before making her way towards the tiered seating to find an empty chair.

"Ms Swan, I am sure that you were reminded that the meeting started at nine sharp. It is now nine twenty-three. I am also sure that I need not tell you that you are no longer an undergraduate whose drinking and sleeping patterns dictate your working hours. You are a faculty member now. This is a job like any other and you are expected to keep a certain level of professionalism."

"I'm sorry. Something came up," Emma said, and even though her words were quiet, Belle could tell that the blonde woman was gritting her teeth.

"Something more important than your first faculty meeting?"

At these words, Emma seemed to undergo a transformation. No longer quiet and unsure as she had been when she had first entered, as she had been when Belle first met her in the corridor two days prior when she had been looking for Gold, the young woman seemed to grow three inches in height and fixed Regina with a positively fierce expression.

"Yes," she said simply. "Far more important."

She offered no further explanation and continued up the seating. Mary Margaret patted the empty seat beside her and Emma sank into it with a brief but grateful smile.

The dean was silent for a few moments; evidently stunned at having had someone stand up to her, before she recovered herself with a little shake of her shoulders and began to speak again.

Belle had to admire Emma's courage, and she risked a brief glance over her shoulder at Gold, the latecomer's supervisor. In his dark corner, Belle couldn't make out his expression clearly, but she thought he was smiling. Well, he was the only other person she knew who was fearless enough to square up to the dean.

At last the meeting ended and the faculty began to file out of the lecture theatre. Cara sidled away almost immediately, citing a meeting about the gender studies course with a sweet young member of the psychology department whom she intended to make 'blush as red as his hair'. Ruby, still not fully awake, took a little longer to pack her things away. Gold stopped by the end of their row of seating on his way past and offered Belle his hand to help her climb over Ruby.

"Breakfast?" he suggested.

"Excellent idea!" Ruby said. "Bacon sandwiches are on Gold."

The doctor in question merely quirked an eyebrow at Belle, and they left Ruby to her laptop wires, exiting the lecture theatre still hand in hand.

Outside, Emma was talking to Mary Margaret, who was filling her in on the bits of the meeting that she had missed.

"Miss Swan," Gold called as the younger blonde began to walk away. She stopped and turned on her heel.

"I know, I know, you warned me not to be late, but..."

"It's all right, something came up. I understand. I just wanted to express my admiration. Not many would refuse to let Dean Mills cow them. Well done."

Emma left them after exchanging the necessary pleasantries, and Belle leaned into Gold's side.

"And there's you with your reputation for roasting your PhD students alive, but really you're just a big softie at heart."

Gold raised his eyebrows.

"Really?"

"Face it, you're squidgy in the middle." She poked his slim frame through his suit jacket. "Well, metaphorically of course. But that's all right. That's what I love about you. One of the many things."

They continued towards the canteen for a late breakfast, and Belle fell to thinking about the new faces in the faculty and the new challenges that the semester would bring. One thing was certain - with Gold at her side, the year was going to be anything but boring...


End file.
